New Avenger (A Steve Rogers love story)

Stupid Heart Monitor

My eyes fluttered open only to immediately shut again. I slowly opened my eyes, letting them adjust to the the bright light surrounding me. Once my eyes adjusted, I looked around. I was in a hospital room. Everything was white and futuristic. The computers looked like something from a video game. They also beeped a lot. Way too much for comfort.

A cool breeze from an air vent made me shiver. My arm hurt as I shook from the cold. I looked down at my arm. A bandage was wrapped tightly around it, blood seeping through.

I began to examine myself, taking in everything that was attached to me. An oxygen mask was on my face, covering my mouth and nose. Tubes connected to the mask snaked down to the floor where they were attached to an oxygen tank. There were six small adhesive patches attaching leads to my chest, two on each wrist and two on each ankle. The leads were connected to a heart monitor, showing my heart activity. This machine particularly bugged me, for it was beeping the loudest. In my uninjured arm was an IV, long tubes connecting it to a bag of blood hanging from an IV pole.

I sat up, making my head throb in pain. Ignoring the pain that shot through my arm, I grabbed the oxygen mask and pulled it off with some difficulty. On my index finger was a pulse oximeter. I pulled it off and tossed it onto the bed. The adhesive patches started to irritate my skin. Pulling them off hurt a bit, but it was worth it. My skin instantly felt better as I ripped them off like they were band aids. The IV hurt a little more while removing it, so I pulled it out with much more care than I did the patches.

The heart monitor's beeps turned into one long, continuous, high pitched sound. The sound reminded me of the ringing that would bombard your ears after a grenade went off that was way too close. Whoever tossed the grenade at me was usually scared when they realized it was me. Especially when I knew it was them and I stared at them with murder in my red eyes, my hair turning red too.

I stood from the bed, immediately collapsing onto the ground. My legs were too weak. How long was I out? I used the bed to pull myself up and lean against. The ringing sound from the heart monitor was driving me crazy. My eyebrows furrowed as I stared angrily at the annoying machine. I pointed my palm at the machine and flicked my wrist, throwing the contraption across the room, without touching it, and making it crash against the wall. The ringing finally stopped.

The door suddenly burst open, a frightened nurse stumbling in. She was quite young. She wore the usual nurse attire: scrubs. Her ash blonde hair was pulled into a messy bun atop her head. Her ocean blue eyes stared at me with fright. The nurse looked at the crumpled heart monitor and back at me. I smiled awkwardly.

"Sorry. It wouldn't stop beeping-" As I tried to explain why there was a heap of metal against the wall, my legs gave way. My arm grew weak and I was unable to hold myself up. I fell to my hands and knees, catching myself with my bad arm, pain surging through the wounded limb. A gasp of pain escaped my lips. I could feel fresh blood spilling from the hole.

The nurse ran to my aid and gasped as she knelt down next to me. I followed her gaze to see what had made her gasp. The bandage around my arm was completely soaked with blood and fresh blood trailed down my arm, onto the white tiles.

My hair fell around my face as I looked down at my arm, no longer in a ponytail. The sight of my hair made me jump back in fright, my back hitting the wall. My hair was blood red. I relaxed a bit when I realized it was my hair reacting to the pain in my body.

Blood continued to pour down my arm. I was now sitting in a puddle of blood. The nurse shot up and ran toward the cabinets opposite from me. She rummaged through the supplies on the shelves, opening a new set of doors when she didn't find what she was looking for in the last. She threw things out onto the floor, frustrated. Within a minute, the cabinets were empty, their contents all over the ground. The nurse got on the floor and searched the pile of medical supplies.